Work Text:
Keigo was a mystery, even to himself. From a very young age, it had been drilled into his head that he was to think of others before himself, make any sacrifice that was demanded of him. Of course, when people heard that, they thought of giving his life. It was true, but perhaps not in the way they expected.
Keigo had been expected to give his life. Hell, he very nearly had. He had his back singed down close to the bone, the skin there rough and puckered in a way that made him sick to look at. All he could imagine as he watched the shiny scabs flex with his muscles was the smell of acrid flesh and the sound of a psychotic laugh.
As if those injuries weren’t enough, as if the universe demanded he give absolutely every ounce of himself the way he had been trained to, All for One had taken his wings. Keigo knew those wings had been used to hurt. To kill. To destroy. But they had also, to him, represented the freedom he had always been searching for. The ease and peace that came with being in flight, high above any of the cares of those below, a time for him to think of himself - that was what he wanted to foster on the ground.
Now, whether by an act of God or a sick joke, he had no choice.
You could see it in him, the conflict. His eyes were still a vibrant gold, a tone you had never seen anywhere else in nature. Now they were missing the marks you had become so accustomed to seeing, and their glow was dimmed with internal conflict. It was the look of a man who had never truly been able to know himself, trying now to catch up and understand who he was without the things that had defined him for so long. There was a heaviness to him, a groundedness that seemed to reflect internally his inability to leave the ground.
Because Keigo hadn’t only given his physical life for the country and the world. He had given every second of his attention and dedication and existence to the cause of making the world safe and easy to live in since before he could even understand concepts like self-sacrifice and altruism. Try as he might, much as he wanted it, he didn’t truly know how to exist without the commission and his title as a hero. He had been forced to start finding out what life looked like on his own when the commission collapsed, and now there was truly no return.
Your heart ached for him. You understood, in a small way, what it felt like to be lost, to start over.
When the dust settled from the war, Keigo took a trip to an isolated cabin in the mountains with you. You would hike together, far into the thick green trees and back again. You found him more than once standing at the large, east-facing window watching the sun rise. You would join him quietly, sometimes clinging to him, sometimes simply being in his presence.
He told you it scared him, changing. Becoming different, foreign, even to himself. He felt like he was losing himself and finding himself at the same time, dying and rising again with every mental spiral and step in his journey of self-discovery. You reassured him that you were growing to love him more and more as he was growing into who he wanted to be. That you were proud.
Starting over meant asking so many questions, questions Keigo was incredibly frustrated to find did not have easy answers. Was he truly someone that could be loved? If he didn’t even understand himself, how could he accept the love you were attempting to give him? How could he love you, when he felt like he was just a fuzzy outline of a person, and not a full human being? Was he even a human being, even capable of love?
These were questions that you knew you had to let him answer on his own. And at that little cabin, watching the sun rise, feeling the light slowly brush and warm his skin, he found that his fuzzy outlines were slowly being filled. He was still unsure, still a swirling mess of years of pent up emotion and development. Still, as he looked into your eyes reflecting the sunrise, as he took you into his arms and rested his chin on the top of your head, he felt solid. He felt whole. He felt human. And that was enough for now.